Cheap options to try:
- Soak in a vinegar-water solution overnight, then wash normally
- Soak in an ammonia-water solution overnight, then wash normally
- Soak in a Borax-water solution overnight, then wash normally
- Treat with Febreze Anti-Bacterial Spray after use
More expensive/less labor-intensive option to try (provided you're on city-sewer instead of a septic tank):
Can't remember when (sometime within the past 12 months) we bought our Samsung W/D set to replace the lemon-plagued Maytag Neptune set, but we've been very pleased. I can wash a load on SilverCare and leave it sit there for 24 hours before putting it in the dryer, with no mildewy smell (even in the summertime)!
Towels and sheets all last longer between washes (due to the residual silver), and the front-load technology is gentler on your clothes, plus uses less water (and the spin cycle's extraction abilities are amazing--dry times are VERY short!). Another nice feature of this washer is that the spin cycle, no matter what intensity you choose, will do a "slow down" tumble at the end, so the clothes aren't plastered to the sides of the drum -- they mostly just land in a heap at the end of the spin cycle, so you don't have to all but crawl inside the machine to find the socks stuck up in the "corners" like you did with our old Neptune (on the few occasions it actually worked!).
Noise and vibration are minimal -- our laundry room is open to the basement, where the computer room and tv room are located (no doors on any of the rooms). Many's the time I've walked into the laundry room, intending to transfer the load from washer to dryer, to find that the washer is still running -- never even heard it! And if you're a lonely person, the washer and dryer have little beeps/songs that they do to signal load completion, etc. We've named ours R2 (washer) and D2 (dryer), because the chiming gives them a smidgen of "personality" compared to appliances that just beep or buzz one tone.
